October 2014

Custom Green Lantern Ch'p Action Figure

Awhile ago I picked up a clearance Rocket Raccoon figure. It wasn't a fully posable figure like a proper 6" Marvel Legends figure, but it did have a nice gun that was better than the one that came with the Marvel Legend's Rocket.

With the left over lesser Rocket figure, I decided to use his head and tail to make a Green Lantern Ch'p figure. I dremeled down the nose and I dremeled out a new mouth and I placed the head onto a Green Lantern B'dg body I picked up from eBay.

Ch'p has been drawn wildly different by different artists over the years, but I've always been partial to the early 80s version, which always looked as much like like a half raccoon, half squirrel to me.

Ch'p should be a pretty safe custom. He's been dead in the comics for over a decade and in continuity has been pretty much replaced by the more Rabbit looking B'dg, so there probably won't be a figure made of him anytime soon.

But of course, now that I've made a custom, I'm sure a proper figure will be announced in the next few months, as that's what usually happens when I make one of these figures. :)

I believe that in the long run – i.e. not this version of the Apple Watch, but the one several iterations down the line – the Watch will have cellular capability and the ability to interface with any number of objects, including accessories that have larger screens and/or superior input methods,1 and will be the center of your computing existence. From Apple’s perspective, that means the Watch category is the very long-term replacement for the iPhone, at least for some segment of the population.

At times, it seemed as if Wells Fargo was trying to integrate banking into every hot new technology, whether it was practical or not. One idea, for example: Customers could use an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to virtually walk into a bank branch and talk to a teller.

There have been a couple high profile experiments with this sort of thing already. Sony Playstation Home, and Second Life come to mind.

My general take on VR, is that you will want to do things that are impractical in the real world, but generally not duplicate/emulate it fully.

I think many people will want a "home" on the web. Sortof like a detailed Minecraft world. While many might have a few simple virtual rooms, ie: One to learn basic info about them, another for photos, maybe book or media recommendations, etc. I'm sure others will create elaborate connections to all manner of services.

People won't want to waste a lot of time virtually walking though. Virtual teleportation, sure. If it's a shared VR space, you'll see people beaming in and out of your space constantly.

VR won't replace voice, web, text or email. If a task is easier to do with those tools, people will continue to do them using those older tools.

People probably will want to watch movies and tv, once the screens get virtually big and good enough. People will also choose to watch shows with other people's virtual avatars. Pausing and talking during the show.

People will want to play some 1st person shooter games, but 1st person shooters will be easier to play longer on a non-vr regular flatscreen. The 1st person shooter VR experience will make most people motion sick, so they'll prefer it as it is today over VR.

However, people will want to play virtual boardgames, think chess, Monopoly, Heroclix, and that sort of thing. Those sort of spacial, slow moving, mostly stationary games will be ideal for VR. The VR will allow them to be enhanced with motion and animation in fun new ways but static non-moving stuff will be popular too.

People will want to take virtual tours. VR Google Maps Streeview, VR Museums, and VR movie sets will be very popular. Businesses may even install a few 360 cameras in their location, so people can virtually "beam in" and look around before committing to visiting in RL.

VR concerts where the performer is on stage in a smaller venue and the viewer can look around from a stationary spot fed by a 360 camera in the front row, will be very popular.

Watching VR sports will be less popular, too much distance traveled/occupied for most of sports for them to be compelling in VR, motion sickness again. Tennis, Fencing, wrestling and other sports that happen in a tight small locations will be popular though, in these smaller venues, the concert experience described above will work well.

There will be a whole category of Virtual presence TV-like experiences, where real world events will have stationary 360 cameras that VR participants can view the event from.

People will want to VR chat with the avatars of people they know, less so with the avatars of businesses and brands. People will mostly want to text and short message businesses and brands. This won't stop brands from creating 3D animated avatars of 100 years of cartoon spokes characters and trying to force this experience on people though.

VR will be a thing, but it won't be a perfect emulation of the real world, any more than the web is a digital emulation of a physical library.

The Flash

Generations

Boomers are mostly a thing. Some of the older Generation X have merged with Boomers.

There's a classic Generation X that has merged with the oldest of Generation Y that don't really see themselves as Millennials.

The Millennials main identity is that they are younger than everyone, except the oldest of them really aren't any more, so that identity is going to fall apart somewhat over the next 5 years.

There was a good 100 year run where these labels were useful, you could broadly bucket American people of approximately the same age together because they were all doing the same life milestones at roughly the same time.

It ain't that way anymore. Age is a pretty sloppy way of looking at what stage of life a lot of people are in now.

Instead of "Generations" people are probably sitting in a matrix that looks something like at right.

Axis 1 - Young or Old.

Axis 2 - Has Kids or No Kids.

Axis 3 - Gig Economy or Traditional Employer.

The young or old thing is one part physical age, one part mental age and one part how the bulk of society perceives you.

Having or not having kids is pretty self explanatory.

Gig Economy or Traditional 9 to 5 employer, is a pretty recent axis addition. I'd even lump people who are at Traditional employers but move around every 3 or 4 years into the Gig Economy bucket too.

Ignoring groups of people held together by specialty niche interest topics for a moment, where you sit in the above matrix will probably have more to do with who you identify with, and how you behave than comparing yourself to the Generation you were born into, and I think for the people even younger than the Millennials, that will be even more the case.

Star Wars Rebels

I enjoyed it. The computer generated animation seemed a little rough in spots, but the nice thing about computer animated shows, they get better with each episode as they develop a library of models and animations they can reuse.

The story, was in the vein of Star Wars IV: A New Hope. It hit a lot of familiar beats from that first movie.

The lead character, Ezra, above, is your Luke Skywalker/Anakin point of view character. Although in the first episode, he came across as Disney's Aladdin.

The rest of the crew has a Firefly vibe to them, that's not a bad thing, it should make for good episodic television.

I never watched much of the Clone Wars Animated Series. I got behind and then never caught up. But I'm looking forward to following this new show week to week.

The first episode is on Comcast On Demand right now, if you've missed it.

The Atom

Ray Palmer, The Atom, is coming to Arrow and also Flash on the CW this Season. The Atom was always a favorite character of mine. The shrinking powerset is fun, but you also have the classic Gil Kane costume design too.

I'm looking forward to what they do with the character on TV this year.

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad